An armored dinosaur could have withstood a hit by a speeding car thanks to a "bulletproof vest": study finds. Photo

A new study shows that the dinosaur's armor was adapted for fighting between representatives of Borealopelta markmitchelli. Besides, it can probably withstand the impact of a car crash at high speed.

This became known as a result of recent research, where scientists examined the fossil of a dinosaur that could grow up to 5.5 meters in length and lived approximately 110-112 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. The fossil is so well preserved that scientists were able to determine the strength of the keratin plates and bone spikes that covered them, Live Science reports.

"This thing can withstand an F150 traveling at speed," said study co-author Michael Habib, a biomechanical paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The well-preserved fossil did indeed reveal a layer of keratin over the bone, but much thicker than expected – nearly 16 centimeters in some places.

"The keratinous membrane over a modern cattle horn is only 1.5 cm thick," Habib explained.

By looking at the structure and size of the keratin shells and comparing them to the keratin armor of modern animals, such as the feather of a porcupine, Habib, and his colleagues calculated the force that the nodosaur armor could withstand. The team also created synthetic nodosaur armor and tested the synthetic armor against the bite force created by replicas of Acrocanthosaurus jaws.

The calculations showed that nodosaurs could probably withstand more than 125,000 joules of energy per square meter – similar to the force of a high-speed car crash.

"These animals did not wear plate armor. They wore a bulletproof vest over the plate armor," Habib said.

The armor is so strong that it can withstand much more force than predators of the time could inflict.

"This suggests that the armor could also have been used during battles between males competing for females," the scientist said.

Other fossils of armored dinosaurs have only bone spikes left. This is because keratin, the dead cells that make up structures such as hair and nails, do not fossilize well. Therefore, by studying armored dinosaurs such as nodosaurs and stegosaurs, paleontologists have suggested that the main defense of dinosaurs against predators comes from the bone structures of the armor left in the fossil and that this armor may have been covered with a thin layer of keratin, like a turtle shell.

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